


Predestined

by Vizkopa



Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6357247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vizkopa/pseuds/Vizkopa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You felt broken. Unfixable. Did you even have the capacity to feel love any more, or was that gone too?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Predestined

Everyone is born with a timer on their wrist. From the moment you take your first breath, it starts counting, and the moment those numbers run down to zero is the moment you meet your soulmate. The one person in the world who completes you. Your destiny.

By the time you turned eighteen, you had watched almost all of your peers take to the seas in search of their destined, many of them returning triumphant with wedding plans on the horizon. Some lucky souls found theirs without ever even having to leave home. 

You forced down the bubbling jealousy in your throat each time a new couple were united. There was no point in pining. So your soulmate was a little slow, you could wait. The timer on your wrist kept counting, and you kept waiting for the moment that decided your destiny. You could always watch the seconds tick down and know everything would be alright.

Except one day it wasn’t.

It was raining that morning. You remembered waking to the sound of it pattering against your window pane. Your pillow was damp and at first you thought it was blood the way it stained the pink pillow red but, with a shock, you realised you had been crying.

You laughed at yourself. How silly to be crying in your sleep. You reached up to rub the tears away when you caught a glimpse of your wrist. Your heart stopped.

Your timer had frozen.

You couldn’t breathe. Your room was a vacuum, sucking you in until your head spun and you felt sick to the stomach. When the tears started, you could not stop them. They flowed freely down your cheeks, obscuring your vision and blurring the figures. But you could still see them in your mind’s eye, stark black against your skin like a brand.

_One year, twenty-eight days, three hours and six seconds._

The village doctor confirmed your worst fears. “Your soulmate has died,” he said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

You had never known grief like this.

It was such a strange feeling – mourning for someone you had never even met. You had no name to carve on a tombstone, no body to bury, no photograph to remember them by. And it hurt. _God_ , did it hurt more than anything you had ever felt. It wasn’t the sharp throbbing pain of a broken bone, or the stinging burn from a skinned knee that had, up until now, been the worst you’d endured. It was a deep, hollow ache in your chest that felt like something had been torn out of you, leaving you to bleed out from the ragged edges of the space where it used to be.

You felt broken. Unfixable. Did you even have the capacity to feel love any more, or was that gone too?

And the worst thing was that no one understood. No one in your tiny village had ever known what it felt like. They tried. They tried _so hard_. But their sympathy could only go so far, and empathy was simply beyond their ability. The smiling faces of couples that walked by taunted you, while the unmoving numbers on your wrist remained as a constant reminder of what you had lost. What would never be.

One day, when the weight of their gazes, so full of pity, became unbearable, you decided you could mourn no longer. You decided it was time to search for answers. You needed closure. Like the others, you left in search of your destined, but there would be no wedding on the horizon for you. 

Your searches amounted to little. But on the Grand Line, in the new World, your chase would come to an end.

It had been a long day of chasing leads that only lead to dead ends. An untouched tankard of ale sat on the table before you. The swill was good enough for the pirates you shared the tavern with, but you refused to touch it. Besides, you needed a clear head in the morning if you were to continue your search. This little port town had given you no leads, so it was likely you’d be leaving early tomorrow.

At the bar, a group of pirates were becoming progressively rowdier as late afternoon wore on into the evening. You watched them over the rim of your mug as you pretended to drink. Their captain was loud and vulgar in his mannerisms and as he raised his overflowing tankard to his lips, you found your eyes draw to his wrist. These days it was impossible for you not to notice. It always made your chest ache when you saw the ticking numbers, but you could not help it. But this time something was wrong. 

This pirate had no timer.

Before you were aware of what you were doing, you were on your feet and across the room, shrinking under the scrutinizing glares of the pirates as you approached. Anxiously, you addressed their captain.

“E-excuse me…” Suddenly your mouth was dry. You swallowed. “What happened to your timer?”

“I burned it off,” the pirate sneered.

“You did that on purpose?!” you cried. “But… why would you do that?”

“Because fuck destiny, that’s why,” he laughed.

“But… what happened to your soulmate?”

He shrugged. “Not my problem. They can do what they want, I don’t care.”

You felt a flare of anger all of a sudden. “You mean you’d just let your soulmate think you’re dead this whole time!? Do you even know what it feels like to wait your whole life for someone only to never meet them?”

The pirate glanced at your wrist and smirked. “Those who let themselves be tied down by fate are weak. You’re free now, you should forge your own destiny.” He leaned forward, his face suddenly uncomfortably close to yours. You felt your heart rate quicken. “Or we can go upstairs and make a little destiny of our own.”

You jerked backwards. “Get away from me,” you hissed.

The pirate laughed along with his crew. “Suit yourself. But you’re not going to get anywhere chasing loose threads, little girl.” He turned back to the bar and his companions, leaving you staring, fuming, at his back.

You looked around. You had attracted the gaze of a number of pairs of eyes around the room. They all turned back to their drinks as they noticed you looking and, dejected, you decided to leave. On your way out, you made eye contact with a red-haired man.

Once in the open, you breathed deeply, letting your rage disperse into the cold autumn evening. It had never occurred to you before that there were people in this world who rejected the notion of destiny. Once you thought about it, maybe they had a point. How long had you been searching? Almost two years of your life gone. The date you would have met your soulmate had come and passed with no answers. You had travelled the world, but you had been so focused on finding someone who was already gone to appreciate any of it.

How many people in this world wasted their whole lives on somebody else?

A page from an old newspaper was fluttering by on the breeze and, on a whim, you caught it beneath your foot. As you stooped to pick it up, you glimpsed the heading. _War of the Best Ends in Blood: Son of the Pirate King Dead_. But it was the date above the heading that made your heart stop and your breath quicken. The paper was from the day after your timer had stopped. Could it be? You scanned the article. Could this “Ace” have been your soulmate?

The tavern doors swung open and closed, momentarily bathing you in warm yellow light and drunken babble, before you were thrown back into semi-darkness and silence. The red-haired man from the bar was watching you curiously. You noted that he was missing his left arm.

“I overheard you talking to the barkeep earlier. I think I know who you’re looking for,” he said with a soft smile. “I can take you to him.”

“You’re a pirate…” you said, wary.

“I won’t hurt you, lass. If you made it this far by yourself, I’d be a fool to try.” He grinned and you felt yourself relax. He had a cheerful smile. “What do you say?”

You bit your lip. Suddenly you weren’t ready. Once you saw it for yourself, your purpose was lost. The end of the line. The severed thread. You breathed in deep of the cool air.

“Take me there.”

You sailed for most of the night, falling asleep just before dawn. The man, who had introduced himself as Shanks, nudged you gently awake a few hours later.

“This is it,” he said softly.

You rubbed your eyes and looked out at a small, green island. From this distance, you could see two white monoliths atop a grassy knoll. Shanks was gazing at them sadly, no doubt remembering the day he dug those graves himself.

“Thank you,” you said, drawing his attention away just so you could see him smile again. It didn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “For bringing me here.”

“It was nothing. I never learned who my soulmate was, the least I could do was help someone else find theirs. Even if it isn’t under the happiest of circumstances.”

He agreed to wait for your return and, with a deep breath, you dropped down into the shallow water below and waded to shore. As you approached the grave markers, you quickly became aware that you were not alone on the island. A figure sat alone before the smallest grave, still and silent.

As you approached, he turned and smiled. His eyes were friendly, but his smile was sad. A burn scar marred the skin around his left eye.

“Were you a friend of Ace’s?”

“Something like that,” you replied. You held up your wrist. “I believe he was meant to be my soulmate.”

“I see… Please, join me. I’m Sabo, Ace’s brother.”

You sat beside him, taking in the words on the headstone. _Portgas D. Ace_. You frowned slightly. The paper had said he was the son of the Pirate King.

“He took his mother’s name,” Sabo said, as if reading your mind. “He never liked being compared to his old man.”

“Then you…?” 

He laughed. “We weren’t brothers by blood. No, we were closer than that. I wish you could have known him.”

It was silent for a time. Then Sabo rummaged in his pockets and brought out three sake cups. He arranged them in a triangle and filled each one with a bottle he produced from his knapsack.

“Twelve years ago we drank from these cups and swore we’d be together no matter what. Fate had other ideas.”

As he pulled back, the sleeve of his coat rode up and you caught a glimpse of his wrist. His timer was as still and as unmoving as yours was.

“Your timer…”

He glanced at his wrist and back to you, a wan smile on his face. “Oh. That…”

“What happened?”

“I died.”

You frowned. “How is that possible?”

“Twelve years ago, I… was in accident. I was hurt pretty bad. So bad that, well, I died, just for a few seconds. Ever since then, my timer hasn’t worked.”

“But your soulmate could still be out there somewhere.”

“You might be right, but there’s no way of finding them. Besides, they think I’ve been dead for twelve years. I might as well have been, I lost my memories in that accident. The Sabo I was back then was gone.”

He touched his cheek absently, feeling the scarred flesh beneath his fingers.

“When Ace died, my memories returned and I hoped it would kick start my timer too.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “No such luck.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged. “Twelve years is a long time. Time enough to heal.”

“You know,” you said, staring at the headstone before you but not really seeing it. “Growing up, I always though soulmates were a sure thing but… it doesn’t always pan out, does it?”

Sabo watched you, waiting for you to continue.

“I met a man in the Port who had willingly burned himself to be rid of his timer. And the man who brought me here lost his arm in an accident, timer and all. I never knew there were people like that, people like me who no longer have a destiny.”

“Maybe someone is trying to tell us that destiny _isn’t_ always set in stone? Maybe, once that shackle has been lifted, we’re free to make our own choices. Forge our own destiny.”

“Maybe you’re right,” you said.

The two of you sat in companionable silence for a time. Then Sabo spoke, gazing wistfully at the grave. 

“Ace never held much stock in destiny when he was a kid. He took his mother’s name to avoid meeting the same fate as his father. It caught up to him anyway.” He sighed. “He would have liked you though.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. He might have succumbed to his fate, but you don’t have to. He set you free. That’s how he would have wanted it.”

You looked away, blushing ever so slightly. “Could you… tell me about him? I want to know what he was like when you knew him.”

Sabo smiled. “Sure. How about over dinner?”

You smiled back. “I’d like that.”


End file.
